Rose Loses His Defender

January 7, 2004|By Roger Kahn Special to The Los Angeles Times

Like many, Giamatti idealized sports and athletes. When he quit academia for Major League Baseball Inc., foul-mouthed, anti-intellectual Pete Rose offended him. I remember saying once in an emotional discussion, "Bart, they can't all be Ryan and Pee Wee Reese and Christy Mathewson."

He made no answer other than to offer a pained expression.

I had better say at this point that Rose, offensive as Rose could be, was in no way evil. He was fun to play tennis with. He liked to take me on in gin rummy, cheating a bit, but we were not playing for money.

Meeting my wife, he said, "You smoke?"

"I stopped," Kate said.

"Marrying this guy will start you again. Guaranteed!"

The jock world with jock needling is a place that I enjoy. A good deal of my time with Rose was rough-and-tumble fun.

But Giamatti, a stout man who had not played sports or bumped around in the exuberant vulgarity of sandlot baseball, had a hard time with rough and tumble. Further, he was no champion of civil rights. As president of Yale, he had problems contending with unions and with the women's movement.

THE BIG LIE

After Giamatti loosed Vincent on Rose, Vincent hired John Dowd, a Washington power lawyer, who had made his name as a prosecutor of racketeers. Aware of the gathering storm, I asked, "Why engage a prosecutor? Why not hire a retired judge, say, Lewis Powell." Justice Powell would bring a judicial temperament to the problem. Prosecutor Dowd would go for a conviction. But now Giamatti had no time for my musings. He was commissioner of baseball. I, a mere scribe, was working with Rose, sleeping with the enemy.

The investigation proceeded brutally. Giamatti assessed major league club owners so that Dowd would have unlimited funds. Dowd engaged private detectives and he and his troops interviewed numbers of felons with whom Rose had associated himself. Giamatti even put his name to a letter Dowd actually wrote, asking for a light sentence for a felon who said Rose had bet on baseball.

Rose was accumulating lawyers in a way I associate with a misstep I once made on a Caribbean isle. Burrs, everywhere burrs. It hurt to walk. Various lawyers explained to me that "you can't prove a negative. You can't prove you did not hit someone." Others pointed out that Giamatti & Co. were denying Rose the rights a jaywalker has -- to confront the accusing cop in public hearing. "Star Chamber." I heard that phrase a bit.

The deal with Warner Books had soured and I was now contracted to Macmillan, once a splendid publisher but now, it would develop, on the way to bankruptcy. The investigation was nasty, but wasn't there a central issue? Had Pete Rose bet on baseball? If I asked that once, I asked it 20 times.

Rose always looked at me evenly and said in his rough speech, "I dint (sic) bet baseball. I got too much respect for the game."

What now? Rose has lied but that still does not make him evil. He had an iron discipline between the foul lines and none outside it. Is the Giamatti-Vincent-Dowd assault American justice? Does Rose now go back into major league baseball? Please!

Hall of Fame? Absolutely not! I want Rose out of Cooperstown, and I don't even want him managing my grandson's Little League team. I am no idealist like Giamatti, but I still like my sporting leaders admirable. Orel Hershiser comes to mind.

I am not going to read the new Pete Rose book. I am too busy working on my backhand. But I'll be first in line at Barnes & Noble for something else. The new confessional O.J. Simpson memoir.